Plato Says A Multitude Can Never Philosophize

The Utilitarian Behaves Sensibly In All That Is Required For Preservation But Never Takes Account Of The Fact That He Must Die... His Whole Life Is Absorbed In Avoiding Death, Which Is Inevitable, And Therefore He Might Be Thought To Be The Most Irrational Of Men, If Rationality Has Anything To Do With Understanding Ends Or Comprehending The Human Situation As Such.

Commitment Is A Word Invented In Our Abstract Modernity To Signify The Absence Of Any Real Motives In The Soul For Moral Dedication.

The First Discipline Modernity's Originators Imposed Upon Themselves Was That Of Self-restraint, Learning To Live With Vulgarity. Their High Expectations For Effectiveness Were Made Possible By Low Expectations Of What Was To Be.

The Old View Was That Delicacy Of Language Was Part Of The Nature, The Sacred Nature, Of Eros And That To Speak About It In Any Other Way Would Be To Misunderstand It. What Has Disappeared Is The Risk And The Hope Of Human Connectedness Embedded In Eros. Ours Is A Language That Reduces The Longing For An Other To The Need For Individual, Private Satisfaction And Safety.

There Are Two Threats To Reason, The Opinion That One Knows The Truth About The Most Important Things And The Opinion That There Is No Truth About Them. Both Of These Opinions Are Fatal To Philosophy; The First Asserts That The Quest For Truth Is Unnecessary, While The Second Asserts That It Is Impossible. The Socratic Knowledge Of Ignorance, Which I Take To Be The Beginning Point Of All Philosophy, Defines The Sensible Middle Ground Between Two Extremes.